Mental flexibility—my mind is rigid as a jungle gym—I don’t let go, my wrists are taut and strained and stretched
wishing isn’t easy
Tag Archives: wrist
There was no cultural bullshit yesterday—maybe just a little—the trendiness of “raw” food cost me $180. I have $1200 to pay to Stamford Hospital and $200+ to hand therapy and then I’m ready for the next emergency.
I have to follow up on Blair’s college loan acct and see if my prepayments posted.
My wrist is 90% better, only noticed once or twice in yoga that there was a difference in capacity from right to left.
I am resting. My arm feels like a brittle painful twig twig of pain.
So then last week was our last session—postponed until after Thanksgiving because so many in class were going out of own or otherwise couldn’t make it and it was my first day back at work in Jersey after the long weekend and the previous week’s hiatus because of surgery on my aching wrist I had to work from home. Huh—I was cutting everything pretty close, had some goods to drop off with Blair, not urgent, just his vest, his coat, his soap—well, what if he gets COLD, he’ll need this stuff, my drive to deliver it to him got the best of me and almost hyperventilating after leaving work at 4 pm under gloomy skies I drove with one hand down into Manhattan, 87 South from Westchester over the Third Ave Bridge, onto the FDR, 23rd Street exit just like usual and then I think I’ll turn on 7th Avenue and work my way back to Union Square along 16th Street—well I turned at 5:30 pm onto a street I shouldn’t have turned onto until 7—goddammit, do I really need such pointed reminders that somehow my timing in this life is really OFF?—red lights in my rearview mirror and I get two fucking summons, one for unsafe turn and one for not seeing a sign or something like that and my heart is pounding and I’m trying to hide my broken left arm because God knows the fines for driving with a broken wrist are probably more than Astronomical, but the policeman doesn’t really seem that interested in me anyway and this too hurts my feelings, thinking a different sort of poet would have engaged him, spurred an action, wriggled out of it, into some grace at the last minute, a reprieve, but no I limped away, now afraid to drive, delivered Blair his package, followed on to class and found a place to park in Queens and participated in the small group, just Josh and Lisa (and the cats) and shared some feeble poetry from the past and made it home and paid my fines plus surcharge within 15 days—$180.
End of October—I blurt out in an email that there’s a reading from In Pieces, an anthology of fragmentary literature by Impassio Press in the city on October 29th. I’ll be there (but not reading). Of course, no one from class shows up, it’s not that kind of group. I’m quite excited by this gathering—there’s Guy, and Jason, Audrey, Ellis, Mary, and lovely Roy, and afterwards, I collect signatures like a giddy child and drink wine and talk of fragments and connections. It’s a lovely gathering. Outside on the plaza, in a windstorm, I fall down and break my wrist.
I miss the next two classes. Halloween is just two days away, can’t really navigate, I stay home becalmed (uncalm) in an utter slump. Unable to celebrate in any way with Sam, a masked witch in a bad mood.
The next week, I’m in New York, but entertaining Geno and Michelle after the marathon. We’re eating at Pure Food and Wine, with Blair, and baby Harry. It’s a good time although I feel phenomenally stressed by the logistics of meeting people in the city and the baby and the driving and the wrist and the expense and the phone call saying I won’t be there at class and the what the hell of all of it. But I like Michelle. She tells Blair stories of the squats in London and Berlin. Geno wrangles Harry pretty well, and Sam takes him out for little walks into the rainy courtyard. We even stop for coffee (terrible) at a nondescript, nonrecommended deli (Greek joint). Returning to my car something like the sound of a loud gong, in the Gong Show, loud and deep and fatal—parking ticket, $65, I parked at 5:40 pm somewhere where I shouldn’t have parked until 6. Just suck it up.
I catch up with the next class. I think I’ve lost the thread of Duncan’s life completely. All I know is that I’m envious of his household, alive with art and poetry and avant friends, community with all its prices and its costs. I’m envious of his ego and his correspondents. Him. Levertov. How to come to terms with what is past. That was then, you see, and this is now.
december 5 1:45 pm
Uneasy, writing in bed on Tuesday.
First, take some conscious breaths. Expel on the exhalation. Expel the instructions. Intentions.
A monument of agendas inside.
Try to arrive. Get here.
Wanted to write my Godamifesto.
Discovering Anne Waldman, turning pages of her Vow with my long haggy-fingered hands and damaged wrist.
Not much can I do. Limited.
Au revoir.
I am spoofing on the Beats today. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is. I am after all forlorn, my wrist(s) are broken, I have fallen from my ladder. My phone.
My arm’s whine affecting my mind, a slight nausea of thinking—or maybe that’s the holiday?
november 14
Wrist issue.
Wrist misery.
Rising above, like a Buddhist, with no solid self.
Emotions rise up out of the unsolid self. Should I accept that living really belongs to my son now?
I can’t scratch my left eye. I can’t applaud. There’s no use applauding now is there. I’ve been in two rooms where applause has been called for, and yet—unable to applaud. No applause necessary. Applaud with aplomb. The plaudits, the maldits, the well-dits. How-do-you-do-dits. This is what we have to say.
My shoulders have regressed since the injury. They are back up around my ears. I am waiting for a beating, another blow to fall.
I am waiting for the pain. I like to devalue, much more than most. I do not like children. I am an ana-pest.
I want to hug my faith, to cultivate it. Of course, that involves nothing.
Still pain, still swollen, still quite ill at ease.
Yes this was me. I am suspicious of me, what is it. Today spent time in completely anonymous pursuits that will never offer any recognition. I’m suspicious of my name. It doesn’t feel appropriate for fame. I wrestle expectations down and down and down again. Meanwhile, why not call it home? No this is not me. Me so what. I like the universal flux instead, brightened and tightened in a node that is my skin, my wrist. My stinging teeth, my statically electric hair. My shapeless brows.
I would like to wash my face. I would like to wash my hands.
I haven’t washed my left hand in almost a week.
I am attracted to behaviors by which we might move off the grid. Out of the mainstream. These are the behaviors I have to hide at work. Sam tried to rig up a stand for my swollen arm that I could wear, out of a piece of copper tubing. It didn’t work.
november 4
I threw out the white gravelly cauliflower soup. I really needed to make tea this morning. I made it—chai teabag and some soymilk. I also had some orange juice with water and four ibuprofen tablets. My hands are ice-cold. I was resting my swollen arm on top of a fleece jacket on top of a flour canister, with a bag of frozen wild blueberries draped over it. I need the elevation and the cold to combat the swelling. It’s painful.
I also threw out three small dead or mostly dead houseplants. No green thumbs here unless they are green from bruising.
Food is very important to me. I miss being able to cook, having a broken wrist makes it an ordeal. I like really tasty food. I like fruit smoothies. I love wine. I like vegetarian food—all the variety, none of the danger. I don’t think I could be vegan though. I like eggs and dairy too much.
I can’t make tea. Broken wrist, can’t manipulate the tea kettle. No clean saucepan available. I won’t toss out the white gravelly cauliflower soup.
I’m wishing for my own soundtrack. I don’t think I have ever really lived my life. Just stepped through it. Looking backwards, while walking forwards. That’s how I broke my wrist. It was windy at the time.
november 1 4am
It’s November 1st. Just barely. It’s 4:10 am. Light precipitation. I can’t sleep. I’m trying to adjust the power balance in my household. It’s been damaged because I broke my wrist. One little bone crack, everything changes.
I didn’t mean to write this. I’m not trying to write a story or anything. I’m trying to write a novel in fragments. Fragments of bone.